The Schmidt-MacArthur
Fellowship Programme opened yesterday at Imperial College London, which for one
week will be the epicentre of an international meeting of minds around the
circular economy. Bringing students and their mentors from leading partner
universities together with academics and experts from industry, the week-long
summer school has already seen engaged debates and enthusiastic working sessions
on its inaugural day…
All this week, we will be following the students through their intensive summer school in London.
The programme, a global education initiative created in partnership with the Schmidt Family Foundation, has been created to develop the skills and innovative thinking needed to transition to a circular economy. The Fellowships have been awarded to post-graduate students from a global network of ten partner universities including: Imperial College London, Cranfield University, London Business School, Yale University, University of California, Berkeley, Stanford University, Euromed Management, Delft University of Technology, MIP Politecnico di Milano & India's National Institute of Design.
All this week, we will be following the students through their intensive summer school in London.
The programme, a global education initiative created in partnership with the Schmidt Family Foundation, has been created to develop the skills and innovative thinking needed to transition to a circular economy. The Fellowships have been awarded to post-graduate students from a global network of ten partner universities including: Imperial College London, Cranfield University, London Business School, Yale University, University of California, Berkeley, Stanford University, Euromed Management, Delft University of Technology, MIP Politecnico di Milano & India's National Institute of Design.
Fellows and their
academic mentors started their day with a 'TearDown' session, led by Andrew
Turney from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. The theme of the workshop centred
on 'voice communication' and participants were given the opportunity to
disassemble a range of phones from across the years. Using this theme he looked
at the historical and technological drivers that have affected design change and
impacted our relationship with communication. An interesting concept that came
into discussion was the "tension" of designing for disassembly as outlined by
David Peck below.
"There is a tension we identified in why a product
design manufacturing company would want to design a product that the user can
take apart, repair and refurbish. Aren't they going to want that revenue
generation for themselves?...So, is it more about individuals being empowered to
take things apart or is it about companies having the ability to generate
revenue and find new business models that work for
them?"
- Professor David Peck,
Delft University of Technology
The afternoon was a hands-on session exploring the
differences between a linear and circular economy, led by Dr Leon Williams
(Cranfield) and Professor Chris Cheeseman (Imperial). A selection of commonly
used technologies were given to teams to discover how they were currently
treated in a linear system. The teams went on to pitch circular product ideas to
a dragons-den style panel of judges.
Ellen MacArthur joined
everyone at the evening meal, spending time with each of the tables, and
congratulating the students on their selection to the Fellowship
programme.
"Where there's a need for change there will always
be innovation"
- Dr Leon Williams, Cranfield
University
We will be uploading
daily updates to give you a breakdown of all the latest activities and insights
coming out of the first ever Schmidt-MacArthur Summer
School.
You can keep up with all
our summer school news here.
Or follow the conversation on Facebook and
Twitter.
#SchmidtMacarthur
#SchmidtMacarthur
Inspired and want to learn more about the circular
economy? Click
here
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Foundation
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